Northbrook Library partners in live event with leading anti-racist writer, scholar Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award winner and one of the country's leading anti-racist voices, will discuss his works during a live, moderated, online Zoom event at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9.
The discussion, moderated by fellow author Natalie Moore, who covers segregation and inequality for WBEZ, is presented in partnership with 11 area libraries including the Northbrook Public Library.
Moore is the author of "The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation," winner of the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction.
Kendi, born in 1982 in Queens, New York, in 2016 became the youngest winner (at the age of 34) of the National Book Award for nonfiction for "Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America." His 2012 book, "The Black Campus Movement," won the W.E.B. DuBois Book Prize.
Among a long résumé of accomplishments, appointments and honors, Time magazine also named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
"We figure we got a pretty good deal," said Northbrook Public Library Director Kate Hall of enlisting Kendi for the Nov. 9 Zoom presentation.
"Being able to partner with 10 area libraries means we're able to bring in these nationally recognized speakers," she said.
"And the fact that we have more than 4,000 registrants, and just under 600 just from Northbrook (as of Oct. 22), to me it means that there's a hunger for this type of programming. People in our community are interested in hearing from bigger names, and this is a way that we can provide it for them."
The Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, Kendi is a contributor to The Atlantic and is a racial justice contributor for CBS News.
Now living in Boston, in 2019 Kendi earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, and more recently was ranked No. 7 on The Root 100 list of "most influential African-Americans in 2020."
Hall listened to "Stamped" on audiobook, and will soon dive into the three-time New York Times No. 1 best-selling author's 2019 book, "How to Be an Antiracist." The Times called it "the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind."
"How to Be an Antiracist" will be central to Kendi's Nov. 9 presentation.
"We're just excited to have such a well-known speaker come to help us learn more about this very important topic," Hall said.
To register for the event, and for more information, visit www.northbrook.info/Kendi.